FreedomTalks

This is great. Over at Red State, Rob Bluey points us to a question asked by Sen. Jim DeMint: Is it really possible to read a 3,417 page omnibus bill in a mere 46 hours and 8 minutes — all the time given to Senators before a vote?
Majority Whip Dick Durbin says, sure, why not?
For [...]

So, while the WGA is on strike, we’ve all been suffering without our Letterman Top-10 lists.  It’s probably not as funny (more like depressing), but Heritage has a list of the top 10 reasons to oppose the budget omnibus.  You should read them all, but here are two of the entries to get you started.
3. [...]

President Bush will sign the new energy bill today.  The good news is that a multibillion dollar tax on energy companies — which would’ve quickly trickled down the pipeline into a price-hike for consumers — was dropped, as were alternative energy mandates.
The bad news is that the bill still contains dangerous, quite possibly deadly, changes [...]

The Politico reports that the AMT patch will go through without a tax hike.

Congressman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) is calling for an immediate suspension of the earmarking process after learning that a House Democrat suggested to Speaker Nancy Pelosi that additional earmarks could assist the campaigns of vulnerable Democrats.
“Inherently, we understand that this earmark process is not equitable… There are a few examples of where your [...]

This may be the do-nothing Congress, but Democratic control of both houses has certainly accomplished one thing: helping out traditional Democratic allies. Here’s the Politico:
Trial lawyers, labor unions, good governance reformers and the environmental community all achieved significant wins since Democrats took control of Congress.
The article goes on to report on campaign donations by [...]

Over at the Club for Growth, Andrew Roth has a good roundup of conservative legislators calling for the President to veto the omnibus.  It’s worth reading them all, but one good point that Sen. DeMint makes is that the bill very clearly fails to fulfill the Democrats’ early promise to cut the number of earmarks [...]

Last night, the House, as expected, passed the earmark-laden omnibus.  The bill now heads off to the Senate, where, after the addition of about $70 billion in troop funding, it’s expected to pass.  The President, whom some had hoped might issue a veto threat over the bill’s earmarks and grossly irresponsible spending measures, has indicated [...]

It’s been noted that one of the reasons the mortgage industry decided to play along with Bush’s “voluntary” rate-freeze plan for mortgages is that they hoped to shield themselves from further regulation. That may be true in the short term, but that doesn’t mean that liberal legislators aren’t still going to come after the industry. [...]

Nothing like starting out your (pre-Christmas-week) Monday morning with a federal budget fight, right? Okay, maybe that’s only true here in Washington.
Anyway, it looks like the long-gestating budget battle is about to kick into high gear — or the closest Congress will get to it during a holiday.  After failing to pass any of the [...]